Wildstar: Pre Launch planning and a little level budgeting

Little pink Spellslinger? Why not?

I managed to get some Wildstar time in today and finally pushed one toon up to level 14. Sadly, it was on the Exile side. It was worth slumming it for a bit though since I got the chance to see a lot more Spellslinger skills and I was able to get answers to some pricing questions I’ve had on some in game services and items such as homes, guild creation and mounts. I also messed around with the costume system, but I’m going to put that in a different post. The realms list was also announced today, so if you haven’t picked your Nexus home, now is a good time to start taking a look (realms list forum post).

Now down to the brass tacks, or however that phrase goes. MMO’s like to mirror reality and in doing so like to have their own form of economy. TLDR they make you pay for stuff. So with that in mind I wanted to know about how much shiny coins I was going to have to keep a white knuckle grip on while leveling so that I’d have enough once those all important MMO life events roll around. You know the ones, getting your first mount, staking out your property, that one time you accidentally ran into those two people emoting making out in local (shudders). No wait, that one didn’t cost anything, at least not for me. Anywho, after searching around here’s what I came up with.

Keep in mind that these costs can change at a moment’s notice if the developers feel like they need to change. I’ll try to keep tabs on these amounts after launch just to make sure things haven’t changed too much from Ops Week to Launch. But I’m going to be playing too, so bear that in mind. But as far as I know, as of right now (pre launch) this is about where these sit.

Guild Creation – 10 Gold

At the level you can start a guild (which is pretty low, under level 14) you might need some help getting this cash together. That is unless you’re an auction house wiz or you have some mates willing to pool in the cash to get things up and running. As long as you aren’t the one doing the running (with the gold) things should go pretty smoothly. You’ll get a notice before level 14 that you can form a guild, but you might as well wait until level 14 to start it up and get some questing in. At 14 you get quests that send you to the main city to do more quests and to start the housing quest chain, SO completing the zones you’re in and getting those last few levels means you don’t have to back track once you have the guild squared away. TLDR it’s worth the wait. Also, if you’re not super worried about getting your house right off the bat, and your friends aren’t super worried about getting a guild started ASAP, you can always wait until level 15 when you’re able to purchase mounts. Then you can just get everything done in one go and then head back out to do whatevs, (mostly questing your keister off until dungeons unless you’re the PvP type).

House – 1 Gold

The interesting and almost creep people at Protostar (a company in Wildstar) will give you your own little chunk of sky land for free. The catch is that if you want to put a house on it, you’ll want to bring some scratch which is where the 1 gold comes in handy. If you pre-ordered you’ll get the rocket house, so that’ll save you the one gold. It may not be completely free to place the rocket house though so just to be on the safe side, make sure you have a little extra coin. Since my pre-order bonus didn’t kick in for the ship I wasn’t able to test placing it today. So I can’t make an absolute comment on it, but I don’t want to tell you it’s 100% free just to have that come back and bite my in the arse. While housing isn’t required, keep in mind that housing in Wildstar actually serves a purpose since it offers you a daily buff and serves as your rest xp. This is pretty much why everyone’s able to get at least their own floating dirt ball. Also, the more you trick out your pad, the more rest xp you’ll get when you log out at home. That and you can add some resource gathering nodes, crafting benches, and even set up your own skate park. It’s yours, so go nuts, it’s Wildstar. Keep in mind though that you may want to wait to go balls to the walls on your housing decor until after you’ve at least picked up your level 15 mount or you may be grinding some gold at the last minute to not be the one person that doesn’t have their mount.

Mount – 10 Gold 68 Silver

This is for the standard mount, some four legged beasties and a hoverbike. You have to wait for the hoverboard until level 25 and that’s going to cost more. Though if you picked up the Deluxe Edition Pre-Order copy of Wildstar, you’ll be able to use your Eldan Themed hoverboard at that level. If nothing else that gives you ten levels to work on building up a skate park in your sweet new house.

Disclaimer: You gotta buy your skills.

None of this includes costs for your skills and I’m not going to list all of those prices out. One thing to think about though is that you don’t have to buy them all up as your leveling, you can just purchase skills you’re sure to use, and then pick up the rest later. If you’re going to be DPS, grab any DPS skill that look awesome. Don’t forget to keep your eye on your utility skills though. Having at least one interrupt on your bar can be a life saver.

Support oriented people like Tanks and Healers may end up spending a tad more if they want to get their support skills before heading into doing group content. That is if they are using DPS skills outside of group content, and then swapping back to support a group. In Wildstar you can actually change out your Action Bar (the skill buttons) and your Amps (kinda like talent trees) while you’re out in the world and out of combat. Changing your Amps costs coin though. It’s not exorbitant, but if you have to do it a lot, it’ll probably start to add up. At least until you can get your second action set.

That’s all I have for now on the money side. I still need to get in a post about how the costume system works at the moment, but that’ll come later.